we knew they had a very powerful background from the point of view of space history. , they hadert goddard- there were two astronauts who were about equivalent, you might say. we knew that russia was our competitors. but in our day-to-day life, getting up in the morning to go to work, we had enough on our plate to not have to worry about what was on the russians played at the time. yes, we knew about them, but it was like looking at them through a scrim, you might say, or some sort of filter. host: you might remember that walter cronkite was deeply involved in the space program and cared about it a lot. the moscowhat time, .orrespondent for cbs we cared at cbs so much about putting it a global context, that we would fly to cape canaveral and compare it to the russian. did you have a feeling of being behind? that you had to catch up? mike: that's a good question and i don't have a good answer. i think there were times when we felt even stephen, may be be behind. toward the latter years, i felt we were surging ahead. i would call year zero being 1969, the year of the first lunar landing, but